Finally, completed a new free audiobook – I’m back at the microphone! I picked up this book in a secondhand bookshop in Sydney, Australia, on my visit there in June 2017. So it’s a special kind of souvenir as well.

Link to the book at Legamus.eu

This book describes the experiences of Dick Gall, a young Australian countryman, from the time of his first application for ‘a homestead selection’ to that of the birth of his ‘son an’ heir’ on the green-grey homestead. It also includes memories of his younger years, when he chased scrub cattle, hunted wild pigs on wild horses and played on the polo field. Steele Rudd knew what he was writing about, having grown up on a homestead selection at Emu Creek himself, and worked as a stockrider (or cowboy) as a teenager.
The book is written in a very lively style, and remarkably, in the second person singular – “you” will literally be Dick Gall himself. The opening sentence: “You’ll be single when the idea of taking up a homestead first gets you.” Or later: “You’ll be three years on the little grey homestead, working hard and becoming well-known and respected; you’ll receive kindly handturns from one and another, and be known to them all as Dick Gall.”

Of course, I don’t sound Australian at all, which is a drawback for such a very Australian book. But I figured better to have a (free) audiobook available in any voice, than not. And any Australian is of course welcome to record a new version. In the meantime, please enjoy!

Big thanks to Erin for prooflistening, and for Hokuspokus for cataloguing the work.